Star Trek S1E16 – The Galileo Seven

Parts of this episode have always bothered me. But at least this is the first time we get to see the shuttlecraft being used by the Enterprise crew to go somewhere. This is a very Spock-centric episode, and I have some issues about it.

Murasaki 312 is a quasar-like formation. Of course, we now know there are no quasars in our galaxy, but they are extremely luminous cores of galaxies. Sure, this could be a black hole, but it sure isn’t a quasar. At least with the digital remaster, they made it look quasar-like.

I find it interesting that they need to transport medicine from one planet to another to handle a plague. They can’t make the drugs on Makus III? But I guess I can understand, since it’s probably a newer colony.

I’m not very fond of the digital remastering of the shuttlecraft. It seems to be even lower quality than TNG. Animation students could do a better job.

And speaking of shuttlecraft, this is the first episode produced that showed a shuttlecraft. “The Menagerie” was filmed later, but aired before this episode.

The instrumentation on the Galileo seems kind of clumsy and inefficient. Latimer had to reach behind himself to press a button to reverse engines.

Kirk said the shuttlecraft is 24 feet long. Not metric!

I can’t stand Commissioner Farris’ constant smug look. It’s the kind of look that makes you want to punch a guy.

I don’t know why they’d assume the Galileo would land on Taurus II. Either it was a wild guess or they thought they’d be drawn into the centre of Murasaki 312. And how would they know about the planets? The systems are unexplored.

Lt. Boma and Lt. Gaetano are bordering on insubordination when speaking to Spock. They’re ready to blame him for everything.

20th century gauges on the shuttlecraft! We have some old technology.

Spock was getting a little emotional while giving orders. Or was he just being forceful?

Spock was questioning himself a lot. This is a Spock I’m not used to seeing. He should be more intelligent than this, as he should know logic isn’t everything. At least he’s more like that in the movies.

What is space normal speed? I would assume it’s impulse and not warp.

When Galileo lifted off, Taurus II’s CG looked extremely amateurish. I’m not impressed with the CG in this episode.

So, this was Spock’s first command. Even though he is a Lt. Commander, he’s never been in command before? He’s second in command of the Enterprise!

Rescued at the very last second! How probably is that? Of course, it was done for the drama.

My Impressions

As I mentioned before, I wasn’t very impressed by this episode. The main failing here has to do with Spock. His inability to reason that less intelligent life forms do not behave logically baffled me. Spock should know better! He should know that living and working with humans for so long. Nimoy’s acting was over the top with this one. Usually, he does well as Spock, but I felt this episode’s acting was atypical of him. Not good. Not to mention his logic was too simplistic.

John Crawford does a pretty good job of being a very arrogant and incredibly irritating Commissioner Farris. I could not stand him! William Shatner was good as Kirk, while the others were pretty typical, including Scotty and McCoy. Though why were they needed for an astrophysical survey is beyond me.

As you could see with my nitpicks, there were things that annoyed me about this episode. It was never one of my favourites when I was a kid, either. Whoever was in charge of the digital remastering of this episode didn’t do a very good job. The shuttlecraft looked awful. I normally like the remastering, but not in this case.

The theme of this episode is okay, but I don’t like how it was handled by Spock. He really should’ve been more intelligent than that.

Verdict

★★1/2

Your Voice

What did you think of this episode? Did you enjoy it? Or did you find it to be unsatisfying, like I did? Let me know in the comments section below.

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3 thoughts on “Star Trek S1E16 – The Galileo Seven”

My biggest beef with “Galileo Seven” was that Kirk & co. do the usual roast of Spock at the end for violating his devotion to logic — ‘So you found it was logical to do the illogical thing’ (I’m paraphrasing from memory) — and Spock agrees. But the choice Spock made wasn’t illogical. If you have a desperately small chance one way, and certain death the other, then it’s surely logical to take the former option, no matter how unlikely it is to succeed. The writers, apparently, just couldn’t resist falling back on the usual Trek trope, which is usually fun but in this case misses fire. 🙂

Yeah, that was a bit out of place. I’d heard that by the end of the third season, they stopped doing the end of episode joke. I can’t remember that. I’ll need to watch for it when I get to that season.